Twilight backflip

Well, it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen. Actually, when it happened, it did happen overnight…there I was, (un)happily hating Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, when the book finally picked up. And yes, I stand by every ounce of my frustration that any writer would wait until halfway into a book to get interesting – if I were a less patient reader there is no way I even would have made it to the middle of the book. And yes, I also stand by my view that the writing is bland, and that Bella is one of the most two-dimensional protagonists this side of Neighbours.

But, when you put it that way, my sudden fandom makes a bit more sense…as an avid Neighbours watcher, I am more than comfortable in the role of loving texts for reasons other than their literary merit. And so I am now, as my Year 9 friends would say, a ‘Twi-hard’. Yes, I love Twilight.

So much so that although I should have written a blog post well before now about my reflections on the National Curriculum Forum in Melbourne (I’ve tried to write a post three times now, never quite finishing…), here I am instead, updating you all on Twilight! What this says about my subconscious priorities…?

Your comments about Twilight are interesting. A lot of adults in the graduate program in library science I am enrolled in love the book.

I used to be a middle school teacher and my 7th and 8th grade students kept after me to read the book. I finally bought it last year but ended up loaning it out to my students because our library did not have enough copies. Somehow it never got returned at the end of last year.

Is Australia very conservative? I thought the southern US (where I taught) is, but haven’t heard of permission being required here. It seems like a thorny issue for library ethics.